Okay, the emails are sounding very, very down.
Here is morning prayer preceded by about a 5 minute, extemporaneous pep talk inspired by the emails.
I have no idea what I’m blathering on about or whether it will help, but there it is.
Pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Incorporate this into your life. It will change your perspective and give you the patience to take the long view. I promise. And, if you are inclined, pray the various mysteries of the rosary. Contemplative prayer changes everything, really.
Audio Liturgy of the Hours (all of ‘em, every day) can be found here, and as you can see by the ad on the right sidebar, you can download that into your iThingy.
You can read the LotH here. It’s slightly different than what I am reading but mostly the same.
The Breviary I use is the Christian Prayer Breviary, but if you’re looking for shorter morning and evening prayers, alternating Complines, and terrific daily readings, meditations, and scriptural readings, I cannot recommend a subscription to Magnificat Magazine highly enough. It’s portable, incredibly useful and instructive and I use mine everyday, for one reason or another.
I’ll put together a collection of other prayer books and related items, so check back.
UPDATE: Julie has a good idea: ramp up the Lenten fasting!
Thanks a lot. I purchased the Christian Prayer Breviary and it sits right next to my recliner in the living room. That way if the news starts to get to me, I have a refuge!
God bless dear Anchoress. You are a constant source of interior peace for my life.
I second the notion of reading Magnificat every day. It’s helpful to focus and to think how many other faithful are reading and praying the same thing!! Thanks!
I am fasting a lot more and my devotional prayer is way up. It hardly seems fair to call it penance since I seem to receive so much spiritual food from the practice. I need to take up the liturgy of the hours, I guess learning about that needs to be one of my next projects.
Do you plan to podcast the Luminous Mysteries Anchoress? I am passing your podcast around to my church buddies. All agree that you have a wonderfully soothing voice for meditation audio.
Hope this finds you well-
[Actually, Dave, I was planning on fitting in the Luminous Mysteries today; I am so backed up with work (and the rosary recordings take so much time) that I have had to keep putting it off, but I will definitely try. The LotH are not difficult to learn - the book is a little tricky at first, but if I can do it, anyone can! - admin]